Hm, I am so conflicted on this game. I can't quite describe it perfectly, but the world seems so... empty... bland... compared to a normal Tales game (yes, I know enemies and townspeople and such are not being shown in the footage, but that's not what I am referring to). That one field he is running down is seriously the lamest empty green field ever design wise, and the town they showed really did not have a captivating design at all.

I really like the concept, I just don't know so far about the execution. Early days, though, I'm sure there's going to be tons to see and hopefully lots less empty blandness, but the debut trailer wasn't the best imo.

This seems like the more ambitious game, what's with being open-world (?) with no separate battlescreens and all. That takes a toll on what one can do with the visual side (somewhat excluding a game like GTAV with a 1000+ person dev team and 5 or so years in their hands).

Hm, I am so conflicted on this game. I can't quite describe it perfectly, but the world seems so... empty... bland... compared to a normal Tales game (yes, I know enemies and townspeople and such are not being shown in the footage, but that's not what I am referring to). That one field he is running down is seriously the lamest empty green field ever design wise, and the town they showed really did not have a captivating design at all.

I really like the concept, I just don't know so far about the execution. Early days, though, I'm sure there's going to be tons to see and hopefully lots less empty blandness, but the debut trailer wasn't the best imo.

Especially after the lackluster field design and the ridiculous amount of same-y environment and port towns in Xillia, I don't know if going 'open world' really works for them.

I didn't play Xillia yet, so I can't compare that at this point. I want open world, but I've played open world games with far more interesting world design than this. This seems sort of like a "my first open world" game, with the barest amount of care put into making it seem like a captivating world to actually explore.

Again though I want to emphasize that it is far too early for me to make a definitive judgment on that. I am just commenting on the trailer not being particularly effective for me for this reason, and I really tend to like Tales games. So I'm still watching and waiting to see more :D

I think the question in regards to the whole 'open-world' thing is what those large fields are supposed to represent.

Are they simply 'larger fields' of the more modern JRPGs ( large hub + dungeons ) or are they an evolution of the 'overworld map' approach of older-JRPGs?

It's somewhat forgivable if it's the latter, which means that the dynamic fields/dungeons remain, but they're placed in between a very very large open field similar to old full-world JRPGs, where you basically travel between boring spaces of land to travel from one town to the other.

But it's very bad if it's the former, because it sacrifices the usually more tightly designed hub areas for large spaces that likely won't be as well designed compared to smaller spaces.

lol I actually sorta feel bad for the main character. He didn't look nearly as cool as I thought he would from that cool little intro starting from the foot. As they went further up, I was like "Ahh fail!" lol.

That said, the PS3 is really delivering lately. It makes me really happy that I didn't end up trading in my ps3 for the $100 best buy gift card after beating last of us. Between this and Persona 5, but especially Persona 5, my PS3 will be getting a serious workout for quite some time yet. In fact, I wouldn't be a tiny bit surprised to see Persona 6 also on PS3.

Seriously, the main character was looking so badass from the waist down, and then it went further up to show the rest lol. Let's hope he gets an artistic reworking. Dude doesn't look anywhere quite as badass as Yuri did.

I can see why someone wouldn't be too impressed by the fields, especially if they've played other Tales games.

The series doesn't really have a good record (yet) of making captivating overworlds/fields of this style. So far they just kinda range from "bland and repetitive" to "tolerable but not really noteworthy". They're getting bigger, but they still haven't made that big step towards a diverse and creative yet organic world, that really tries to apply all the space so exploration is fun and rewarding.

I really hope this is the game that finally makes that big step, so while the current field isn't that impressive from a design standpoint (to me, at least), hopefully latter footage will give a closer representation of what they're trying to do.

Really unfortunate to see that the Tales team does not seem to put in the effort to push the PS3's capabilities. For the style of art they use these games have to be able to look much prettier. I mean it's not ugly or offensive, just does not stand out from anything they have done in the past and the PS3 has been out for ages.

lol Baba's been lying about Go Shiina's involvement in Tales then. He always said he was too busy. I mean unless they just recently contracted him or something. But anyway, good news.

Originally Posted by Amir0x

I didn't play Xillia yet, so I can't compare that at this point. I want open world, but I've played open world games with far more interesting world design than this. This seems sort of like a "my first open world" game, with the barest amount of care put into making it seem like a captivating world to actually explore.

Again though I want to emphasize that it is far too early for me to make a definitive judgment on that. I am just commenting on the trailer not being particularly effective for me for this reason, and I really tend to like Tales games. So I'm still watching and waiting to see more :D

Tales team isn't really good with big worlds. They're trying to improve though. Graces was basically connected linear roads. Xillia had spacious fields but there's a lot of copy/paste going around, so overall the fields weren't that interesting. This game is going to be more spacious than the others, but we don't know how much asset reuse there's going to be or how they're going to fill up the fields or how the fields are generally designed. It'll probably be an improvement over Xillia, which by itself would be OK, but we'll have to see if it's anything...more.

At the moment the field they showed doesn't look too hot because of the draw distance.

There's grass close up and then it's just really plain far away so it looks weird. I think they should add more patches of grass though like Xenoblade:

As for your town complaint, I think Xillia has some of the best towns in the series, so I think Zestiria will be fine in that regard.